Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction (23 page)

Death had scared her when she was younger. She remembered when her grandmother had pneumonia. It was Christmastime, and the old lady had come to the table too sick to eat much, but not too sick to marvel aloud, as she did every year, complimenting the bright stitches. Chloe had tried to persuade her to remain in bed, but Grandmother said being with the family was better medicine than every pill the doctors prescribed. Chloe was unable to take pleasure in her presents until her grandmother had recovered.

How odd it was to sit here now and contemplate her own death, and to realize the fear had somehow been washed away; to know that when it was time, she could go gently. To wonder, is it time? And to feel…what was it she felt? Contentment? Anticipation? She wasn’t sure.

Ah, now that rang true, like it was an answer of sorts.

And then footsteps in the sand, a small form, hugging her from behind. A different answer, but maybe a more important one.

“Gram-mee! Gram-mee!” Chloe’s granddaughter, also Chloe, kissed her on the cheek.

“Mom, what are you doing out here?”

“It’s my favorite beach. I’m sitting in the sun, enjoying a warm autumn day.”

Little Chloe splashed into the water, scooping up sand and
pouring it on her grandmother’s feet. Chloe smiled, though the cold made her arches ache.

“You could catch your death out here.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Chloe didn’t think Karen was ready to actually talk about her death. “Not today, anyway.”

“Look, Gram-mee!” Little Chloe held out a muddy hand, “A shell!”

Chloe admired the shell and agreed to keep it safe, while Karen sat down. “Ow! I don’t know why you like this beach so much.”

“You don’t have arthritis.”

“And you didn’t either, when you brought us here every summer, when I was a kid.”

Chloe nodded. It was true. She liked the contrast between the hot sand and the cold water, and always had. “So, what brings you here?”

“I took our tablecloth in to the restorer; you were right, it can’t be fixed. But they can save nearly all the embroidery, and all the fairies. I’m going to have each piece framed, so all the cousins can have part of it. And they’re going to treat and seal them—if we keep them safe, and out of the sun, Chloe’s great-great-grandkids will be able to enjoy them.”

Chloe looked at her daughter’s shining eyes, and at the shell, so like the shells she’d gathered here when she was tiny. Maybe she did have a legacy to leave, still. She pretended to frown. “You’re going to bug me again to record the stories of making that tablecloth, aren’t you?”

“I sure am. And I’m not going to take no for an answer.”

Chloe smiled, “I’d like that,” and was rewarded by a big, warm smile. That warmth helped her aches more than the sunlight.

Smiles and laughter could be so fleeting, she thought. Their warmth made a sharp contrast to the eternal cold of death.

Chloe decided to take her time on death’s shore, savoring those contrasts, though it might take years to properly appreciate them.

Noel Sloboda

I
don’t want to sound judgmental, but Rodney really should have stayed away from local bars. Everyone in town knew about the pacifism pledge he made back in September 2001, and many wanted to test him.

Boys from the local community college would surround his table, baiting him with remarks about his mother, calling him names. Sometimes they threw bottle caps or peanut shells in his hair, or they tried to trip him when he got up to leave or go to the bathroom. It wasn’t raw-mean, but it wasn’t exactly lighthearted.

Still, I liked to watch these little scenes play out. Rodney’s response to the goads was always the same, studied and collected. Nodding slightly, as though he could discern something sensible in the abuse, he locked his eyes on a spot miles away. He never said anything, just breathed like some Buddhist monk, in through the nose then out, long exhalations from deep in the lungs. He seemed so at peace. The boys inevitably grew bored and moved on. Sometimes, they even left a beer for Rodney, as if to say thanks for the sport.

This routine would have continued for a long time if that woman from the local community college hadn’t visited the same bar as Rodney one Thursday night back in November. She was an anthropology professor, I think. She might even have been doing some sort of fieldwork. Right after she entered the bar, she settled at a table near the door and started to write in a little green notebook. She kept at it for about half an hour, scribbling
away. Then the boys arrived. They didn’t even take off their coats before they started in on Rodney. At first the professor just watched as they practiced their rituals, circling Rodney’s table while making faces behind his back. Next they peppered him with little gin-soaked paper balls blown out of straws. He only sat there doing his breathing. It seemed like business as usual.

But all of a sudden, the professor was up. Some line, visible only to her, had been crossed. Pocketing her notebook—and breaching all scientific protocol—she moved in on the boys, waved a bloodred press-on in their faces, and started shouting. I couldn’t hear what was said, but I could tell they listened to her. Maybe they knew her from the school, or maybe they were just surprised.

As they stepped away, Rodney stood up. His face was crimson. He placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and shoved her back, hard. “Back off,” he barked in a voice that wasn’t quite his own, a voice loud enough to be heard across the room. The professor teetered and bumped into the bar.

She seemed like she was about to say something, for a moment. Instead, she plopped down on a barstool, took out her little green notebook, and began to write again. Rodney seemed confused as he dropped back into his seat. His face was still bright and shiny, but now it looked like a leaky balloon left behind at the county fair. His face seemed to fold in on itself as he let out several sharp, little breaths and waved irritably for a waitress to bring him a beer. The professor bobbed her head up and down almost imperceptibly as she continued to write, watching Rodney as he guzzled his beer and then let out an uncomfortable-looking belch. I couldn’t actually hear the burp from where I sat, but I thought I could hear that pencil scratching over the clink of glasses and the buzz of the crowd. I wondered what the professor saw and what kind of story she told about her encounter with Rodney.

Although I’ve kept my eyes open for the professor, I haven’t seen her since that night back in November. And I haven’t seen Rodney either. He went to county lockup early the next morning, after he was pulled over on his way home.

Nobody knows all the details about what happened—only that he made a dash from his car after being stopped at a sobriety checkpoint. He hadn’t had much to drink, maybe two or three beers all night. People speculated that maybe he was worried about the smell from the gin-soaked paper balls he never cleaned out of his hair. Others said he had just bottled up so much anxiety after all those years of silently enduring taunts that he panicked. But I think Rodney probably lost it when the cop started to write in one of those little books cops always have. With that impersonal ledger in his face, Rodney might have decided he didn’t want to wait for the conclusion of the official story. So he fled the scene, counting on strong lungs to give him an edge as he made his break.

Cindy Tomamichel

E
ven among Christmas aficionados, it’s not commonly known that the current Rudolph is really the son of the real Rudolph.

More a clone, in truth. All of them, Prancer, Dancer, and the rest, are all genetically engineered. Magic goes only so far. I have magic, but it was never meant to be the lethal, hammer-of-lightning kind, more the sort that keeps your trousers dry under an avalanche of toddlers. Anyway, I have eight tiny, semi-sentient reindeer that can magically travel fast, are amazingly strong, but which are mean bastards. Rudolph was some sort of genetic mixup. It happens; the elves get a bit carried away sometimes.

I guess my story starts way back in the 1930s, just before the uniform was redesigned by Coca-Cola to red and white. I say uniform, because popular imagination—or the advertising that substitutes for it—influences how I appear. Jolly and fat has been pretty hard on my knees, and don’t get me started on the freaking chimneys.

And 1932, well, it was a lean year. Joyless, tired, hungry people do not imagine well, and Christmas, I hate to say, was pretty threadbare. People were starving poor, eating their boots, and they tramped across the country in search of work. It was the first time for the welfare line, and the shame of it ate into people’s souls. It ate away their imagination, their jollity, and the happiness that exists in more prosperous times.

Well, I landed on a rooftop, and the wretched thing collapsed. Long winter nights of burning every second beam had made it a very
flimsy structure, not even strong enough for eight tiny reindeer, nor for me, despite being thin and dressed in rags that year.

I looked at the people living there eye to eye, the first time I’d done that in a long time. I had landed in their living room, and there must have been twenty camped there, wrapped in newspaper and huddled together for warmth. No chance of invoking the Santa invisibility clause.

I got out as fast as I could, but the crowd was faster. The other reindeer had never liked poor Rudolph, especially since the foggy-night business. Sure, they sucked up to him as a leader, but I knew they still hated him. They blocked the doorway, and the crowd dragged him down.

Poor Rudolph Senior. But he made damn fine sausages.

Thomas Pluck

Y
ou don’t have to take the fight, Terry,” he tells me. “He’s got sixteen pounds on you.”

The guy we trained for dropped out. Stomach flu, he said. Mixed Martial Arts is a rough game. Happens a lot. When they see a record like mine, with losses and wins nearly equal, they think you’re a stepping stone. Then they see you at the weigh-in, all chill with dead eyes, and it puts a maggot in their brain. Keeps them up all night, thinking about the four lousy ounces of glove between my eye-cutter knuckles and their face.

“I know you’re amped up. But the replacement’s a middleweight, walks around at a buck ninety-five. He was on the bike at the gym all night wrapped in trash bags, and he still can’t make welterweight. Manager was practically holding him up at the weigh-in.”

Mack’s a good trainer. He looks in my eyes, though he knows he won’t see nothing here. I’m already dialed in. I know he’s scared for me, but my record’s 15–17 because I never back out.

“C’mon, Tee. Listen to me this time. You can take the champ down, we do this right. It’s not worth getting your brains knocked in to make a point.”

Your first time in the green room before a fight, I don’t care who you are, you’re shaking. I threw up the first time. The walk to the cage feels like a mile. The fans cheer or heckle, but all you hear is your heart chugging like a freight train full of steam. Your trainer, corner men, and buddies, they’re all behind you. Slapping your shoulders, shouting encouragement. But you walk that empty tunnel alone.